*snicker* I'm having a lot of fun imagining Kisuke's *face* when he realizes he's gone and fallen in love with both Erich AND Alexis.
It happens one late evening, just the three of them sitting around in front of a fire and talking. They’re not even talking about anything important -- Alexis is telling tales of the other Ladies she met for tea, silly little anecdotes to lighten the mood after the /other/ things she’s told them--
(Alexis keeps them all aware of world beyond their lands, of the unrest beginning to emerge and the fury beginning to foment. She walks beyond the safety of the wards and /listens/, playing the kind and gentile Lady that she was trained to be to those beyond the Quincy she leads. Erich hears things from his old war companions, but Alexis hears things that even they do not, and together the picture the two of them are building is... not good.)
--and she tilts her head back to laugh at one of Erich’s quips, tendrils of hair escaping her messy bun and falling across her face and Kisuke...
Kisuke has to excuse himself. He steps into the bathroom and leans heavily on the sink and runs a hand over his face. There’s a coil of warmth in his chest and Alexis’ laughter still in his ears and all he can think is “kami, I’ve really done it this time”
(He’s gone and fallen in love with BOTH of them, with a married couple that will /never/ look at him twice except, perhaps, as a best friend. Alexis, he is certain, only cares for him because Erich does, and Erich has always been devoted to Alexis first and anyone else a poor second. No matter how Alexis is convinced Erich /loves/ him, it doesn’t change the truth.)
But even so, he can’t regret it. He /loves/ them, treasures their friendship and the way they’ve opened their home and their family to him, and perhaps... perhaps this was just as inevitable as falling in love with Erich. Because now that he’s met Alexis, now that he’s had a chance to see them work together, he can’t imagine them as anything but a pair.
Loving Erich is to love Alexis, Kisuke thinks as he stares into the mirror and takes in the hints of shock-awe-/love/ that are shining through his expression. It crept up on him, he knows, but now that he’s realized it he can’t /unrealize/ it.
Kisuke carefully schools his expression back into his cheerful mask and returns.
(The amused and /fond/ look Alexis shoots him as he returns tells him he isn’t hiding it quite as well as he thought. But... maybe that, too, is okay. She didn’t chase him off for loving Erich, perhaps she won’t mind this, either?)
(In the privacy of their bedroom that night, Alexis rolls her eyes and admits defeat. Erich called Kisuke’s realization more accurately than she did, damnit. Only a few more weeks and /she/ would have won their bet.)
